Chapter 233: Turn I

The good day lasted 6 days, which for a man in a relegation fight is close to a holiday.

Then it was Saturday, and the league came back through the turnstiles of Marsh Road, and the side it brought with it was Sheffield United.

"Of all the teams in the division," Danny Vine said, finding me at the tunnel mouth an hour before kickoff. "The one you robbed."

"We paid 3 million pounds, Danny. That is not a robbery. That is a receipt."

"They think it is a robbery. Their old lad is worth 4 times that already and their own fans know it." He had the little notebook out. "They have made a song about your Maguire. It does not scan and it is not kind."

"He will have heard worse."

"He is 19."

"He is 19 and he has heard worse." I watched the away end filling, a good 600 down from the steel city, red and white and loud an hour early. boom of a drum somewhere among them. "How is the wager?"

"Which wager."

"Brave or stubborn. We will know by Christmas. Your words, Danny, twice in print."

"Hm." He clicked the pen. "8 days ago at Bournemouth I had the stubborn column all but typed. Then you win a cup tie nobody saw, and here you are grinning at a promotion side like a man holding cards."

"I am grinning because it is nearly 3 o’clock and there is not one thing left I can do about any of it," I said. "That is not holding cards. That is the opposite of it."

He wrote something anyway.

"The last time these 2 met here, your own crowd booed the pair of you off." He nodded up at the filling stands.

"Same crowd, Sam. They do not forget a bad month in 8 days. Lose this one, at home, to the club that thinks you mugged them, and I do not have to write the stubborn column. This lot will chant it at you."

"Then I had best hope we are brave," I said, and left him in the tunnel mouth to go and find the one man who could make us it.

Sadler had the board up in the little room off the corridor, and he did not turn round when I came in.

"Same shape?" he said. "Sit off, break, like the cup?"

"Not today."

Now he turned.

"At Brackenfield we sat off because we had no choice, 3 kids in a mudbath." I shut the door. "Here, at home, in front of our own. Take the leash off, Craig. Let them play."

"Against a promotion side. In a relegation fight." He said it flat, laying each word down like a card that beat mine. "You want me to open it up against the best passing team in the division."

"I want you to trust the 4 players I spent the summer and a fortune I will never see again to buy." I kept my voice level.

"The sitting off was the medicine. It was never meant to be the diet. They are ready to be what they are. Let them show the town what it is."

He studied me a long moment, the way he reads a sheet with a decision already inked.

"You have thought about this a good deal further than 90 minutes."

"I have thought about very little else since June."

"That is not the same as knowing it comes off today."

"No," I said, and meant it to my boots. "It is not. I cannot see this afternoon any better than you can. I am asking you to be brave on a Saturday I am as blind on as the man on the Bovril End. That is the whole of what I am asking."

Something in him settled. He picked up the marker.

"Off the leash," he said. "Kanté sits and holds the house. The other 3 go and play. If it turns sour you will hear the exact crowd that booed us in October."

"If it turns sour it is on me. Whose team is it?"

"Mine, on the grass." The old answer, and half a smile with it this time. "The rest of it is yours to lose."

The teams came out to a noise I had not heard at Marsh Road since August. ROAR under the new roof, the sound trapped and thrown back down. stamp of feet on the old wooden stand.

Not all of it was warm. There is a wariness a crowd carries when it has been hurt lately, a readiness to turn. I could feel it in the stand the way you feel weather in a bad knee.

"COME ON YOU BLADES," went the 600, and then, rolling and enormous, the old chip-butty anthem they sing, the whole away end swaying to it.

Ted Cutler was in his seat 2 along from mine, 1996 scarf on despite the roof, hands already knotted together.

"Big lads," he said, watching Sheffield warm up. "Proper big lads."

"They are."

"Our Maguire is bigger." He said it like a fact of geology.

"You watch. Boy has got something to prove to that lot, and a defender with something to prove is the most dangerous thing on a football pitch. My dad told me that. He was right about 3 things in his life and that was 1."

The old smells came up the stand with the noise: Bovril, wet wool, fried onions off Murat’s kiosk under the away end.

Ted passed me his cup without asking. I took a mouthful, all beef and salt and scald, and handed it back.

"You still put too much pepper in it," I said.

"There is no such thing as too much pepper," said Ted, "and a man your age should know it by now."

PEEP.

For 20 minutes it was even, and honest, and tight, and the wariness sat over the ground like the roof over the terrace.

Then the summer arrived all at once.

Kanté won it, because Kanté always wins it, a foot in where a Sheffield man thought he had a yard. nip. He did not dribble it. He gave it, first time, to feet, and set off.

Reece to Mahrez. Mahrez to Vardy, dropping. Vardy back to Mahrez, running. smack of the ball off the outside of Mahrez’s boot, round the corner of a defender who was still deciding.

And there was Vardy, where he lives, between the last 2 men, onto it and away.

thwack. Low, hard, inside the post. 1-0.

He did not smile. He turned and pointed one finger at the roof, at the sky he could no longer see, the way he has since a warehouse floor in Sheffield made him.

And Marsh Road came off its feet.

ROAR, a different animal to the first one, disbelief in it and relief and something breaking loose. "TIL-BROOK, TIL-BROOK, TIL-BROOK."

I have watched that goal 30 years before it was scored.

I mean it plainly, in the one place I am ever plain. I have seen those exact 4 men move a ball like that, first time, no fear, against far better than Sheffield United, on nights this town will one day cross the sea to be part of.

I built the club to buy me the ticket to watch it early. Here it was, years early, in a relegation fight, in the rain.

I said none of that. I stood and roared like Ted, and let it be a goal, and not a memory arriving ahead of schedule.

"There," said Ted, gripping my arm, his eyes wet. "There. That is the team you kept telling us about."

"That is them."

"Say it was worth it. Go on. Say it out loud once."

"It was worth it," I said, and for once the saying cost me nothing.

Sheffield came back at us, because promotion sides do. thud of a header wide. SLAP of a Braithwaite save, held this time, no rebound.

Then, on 41 minutes, Mahrez decided the afternoon belonged to him.

He got it 30 yards out with his back half-turned and 2 men on him, and he did the thing I have watched him do in a stadium that does not exist yet.

shimmy, one way, then the other, and the 2 men were suddenly 1 man, and then no men, and the goal was in front of him and the whole ground knew.

thwack. Far corner, off the underside, in.

The roof came off Marsh Road. ROAR.stamp-stamp-stamp. Bald Tony’s bell going like a fire alarm. "MAH-REZ," they sang, "MAH-REZ, MAH-REZ," a name half of them could not spell in August.